The envelope must have come by way of Afghanistan, battered and scarred in a war zone. One corner was crumpled, crushed against something and held there for a long time.
There was a degree of softness to the envelope, as if it had been rubbed against its fellow pulp products for months, layered in a stack that fell over and spilled across an office floor. And not just once.
Two queries were sent to the David Black Literary Agency, for two different novels and in two different months. Only one SASE made it out alive, battered and bruised, with a haunted look upon its face. And what of the form rejection? The print was skewed, the words blurred after too many trips through a copy machine. It took a fight to get the single sheet out of the envelope, so enmeshed were rejection letter and SASE.
Which manuscript is not garnering further interest? Both, I guess. But since the first query was sent in April, after six months it doesn't make much difference. Take it as a two-for-one special, there was finally an intern on board to deal with the stacks of queries that no one has time to read and this is the best you'll get.
I'd write if off, but the queries were already chalked up as rejections based on the no-reply rule. Six months or not at all, it's close to the same thing.
4 comments:
Ahh, the old two-fer rejection, a classic. Sorry that you have to suffer through it, but maybe not alone? Maybe you'll want to post your rejection at www.literaryrejectionsondisplay.blogspot.com
Sometimes it's good to share the pain. Btw, Six months is a long time, no?
In the overall scheme of things, six months is little more than a blink of God's eye.
The earth is billions of years old. What, then, is six months out of so many years? Besides a hell of a long time to wait, of course.
Sigh. I work both sides of the slush pile. My own work languishes in others' piles...and yet, I'm also guilty of allowing others' work to languish in my own inbox for far too long. In my line of work, K-12 ed, the pile is small, as we don't typically acquire, we commission, but we still get submissions and consider them. After many years, I'm convinced that no branch of publishing will ever be well-staffed enough to attend to unsolicited submissions in a timely and professional manner. Sorry this isn't more encouraging!
There's so much slush out there, it would take an army to wade through it in a timely manner.
It's the nature of the publishing game, to wait and wait some more.
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